Memories and Musings
by Scintillating Void
Summary: A series of short fics centered around Magus. These were made as writing prompts for a Magus rp blog. More will be added up to a point as more ficlets are made. These are somewhat still rough so I'd appreciate feedback!
1. A Memory of a Song

(Prompt: A memory.)

* * *

Most evenings Janus could find Schala in her room working on that tapestry again.

He wasn't interested at all in singing, but the way she sang as she wove various threads through the loom soothed him. He would never admit it to himself that it did, but she always knew anyway. She knew by the way he would come just an hour before his bedtime.

It was only after some time did he recognize that the tapestry was meant to depict something.

"What is that?" The young prince asked.

Schala paused her singing. "It depicts the world and the sun, the moon and the stars."

Janus had to ask another question.

"Why do you always sing when you weave?"

"It's not just a song." She smiled wryly and turned to face Janus. "It's a spell. As I weave this tapestry I weave the spell within. The spell isn't that long, I just want to make sure it covers the whole weave."

"What is the spell for?"

"Protection. And my prayers. My prayers for safety and happiness for all our family. With all the new changes happening in our kingdom, I sometimes worry that something unexpected might happen."

"How does the spell work?" Janus curiously asked again.

"When I finish the weave, it will radiate good fortune for us. Or so I hope…spells with effects like these are not always…reliable but it is better to have them than not." She looked worriedly for a moment.

"Do you think it will help mother?" The boy's eyelids drooped and he looked down at the floor. He idly kicked his legs around.

"I…hope so." The princess replied. "I don't know what has gotten into her, I think it is the new Mammon Machine…I just…don't know how…or what happened…" Schala trailed off.

Janus looked back up at the tapestry. "I hope it works. It's pretty."

Schala smiled. "Oh you think so? You usually never say that."

Janus smiled back a slightly bashful "Heh". He then added, "Well I don't wanna to interrupt you, sis."

"It's okay, Janus."

"Well, I have to go find Alfador anyway, and bedtime is soon."

"Goodnight Janus."

"Goodnight, sis."

That tapestry was never finished, for sometime after, just before the tapestry was done, their mother would demand that Schala spend her evenings with the Mammon Machine.


	2. Eldritch Transformation

(Prompt: Character transforms into a monster!

Warning: Some body horror ahead, and bad attempts at Lovecraftian descriptions)

* * *

Magic is dangerous. Time travel is even more dangerous. Having tremendous magical power and the ability to use magic to transcend time and space is even more dangerous to one's sanity and humanity.

Humanity was already scarce within Magus, or at least that's what he told himself. Yet he was unknowingly correct in a more gruesome way. How long had he been looking for his sister? How often had he witnessed alternate worlds? How inured had he become to being an eternal wanderer within the vast reaches of immense strange aeons?

The first sign was his aging. He heard of time traveler's immunity, but he had not anticipated this. He took count of his personal timeline again and realized how old he was now.

He was already 90 years old. Yet he felt no older and appeared no older than the 40 year old man who left his world for the last time. He was not feeble of course, and wondered at first if it was the energies of darkness at his command that became part of himself.

He saw his reflection and noticed something different. His pupils were slits, like a cat! He backed away a little at this sight. He was changing, and this time it wasn't by his own guile or by accident.

 _What is happening to me?_

He looked down at his bare hands. Just awhile ago his fingernails began to grow thicker, longer, pointed and sharp. His human hands looked monstrous with their new sharp claws. Even his fangs became longer. His bottom canines grew longer-his teeth no longer resembled that of an elegant vampire, but became something more fitting for a werewolf.

He checked himself for any curses and enchantments, but could find none. There was a dreadful feeling within him that this was a…natural consequence of his condition and habits. And dreadfully, he confirmed it by using spells to check the root of the changes. He lived a life no human was meant to live, he had seen and done things no human was allowed to do-and now he would become no human.

He ignored the changes for awhile, he even liked them a bit since they enhanced his intimidation. Yet now he could no longer really say he was human anymore, at most he could say he was human, or was originally human, but what was he going to become now?

Then came the horns. They sprang out of the back of his head, dark and twisted like that of an denizen of Hell. They were remarkably light weight but still bulky, good thing they did not interfere with lying on his back and would add a little more bulk beneath his hood. Then later on he felt something emerge from his spine…a…tail? It was black and covered in scales like a dragon with a sharp barb at the end. Somehow this amused him, he was once called the Fiendlord after all and now he was transforming into something more like a fiend of old supernatural legends than the creatures he commanded. Awhile later while he was in the midst of dreaming between the stars, he awoke to find a great pair of…demonic wings sprouting from his back. They were as black as his tail and their clawed ends were like his horns.

 _Oh great…_

He wasn't sure what to make of all this, they were nifty, and in some worlds he could blend in, but really in most cases it seem to hinder him due to not being used to having this extra body parts.

As he beat his wings against the cool night air, he could hear the Black Wind beat alongside them.

 _Is this what is causing such changes?_

The Black Wind, the sound of death and decay, he had learned to harness its power, to hear its dreadful whispers, to hear its menacing howls. It would accompany him wherever he went, even in places where it did not naturally exist. It was neither friend nor foe, it was an otherworldly miasma like a specter that always haunted him. He used its power in his spells, and he used its knowledge and harnessed some of the forbidden things of the universe in his travels.

But it couldn't just be that.

What was happening to him was the cumulation of everything. It was the cumulation of all the suffering he had endured, the whispers of the Black Wind, wandering time and space, already partially transformed into a fiend before these strange changes, and the immense magical power bred into his veins.

He collapsed right there on a cold, snowy mountainside, somewhere on a planet, somewhere in the vast multitude of multiverses.

He laughed, and laughed at his strange fate.

The full moon looked down upon him on the sky, and he could sense the energies of the universes. He could sense the flow of time, the distortions of space, of dimensions and features of reality that no human senses could see. As the mundane reality of his human existence peeled back, it showed him there was more, much more than he could ever imagine. There were colors he had never seen before with human eyes, he could see floating beings that existed between the fringes of realities, he could see swirling torrents of energies unknown to human science or magic, he could see time and where timelines split and decayed. He could see what lay between the stars in the unfathomable, vast abysses, and he knew deep down that soon he would have more in common with them than he would have in common with a human being. His consciousness ascended into the great depths of the void where he could see the yawning stretches of reality beyond the comprehensions of mortals, where he could see the stars for what they were, for how they devoured, sang, and communed. The darkest corners of the universe now populated by monstrous cacophonies that bore no meaning to human minds, but to his mind, they now sang of the beginning and the end and the existence of all things. They emanated and echoed from the pit and center of existence where the maddening forces of creation and entropy roared together.

And then he sank back down to his body.

He looked down and saw a feeble tiny shredded pile of material that was once his clothing and armor beside him. Then he looked over his body to see a set of shimmering, black iridescent scales all over. His limbs no longer human but giant, black, draconic things with doubled pairs of arms and legs and four great wings. His face was no longer humanoid, but the gaunt, stretched visage of a draconic beast with four horrifyingly glowing eyes like shining red rubies. His horns were bigger, and twisted like gnarled branches of dead trees. His serpentine body had a series of tendrils that ran along his back and whipped around at his whim and could very well taste the presence of previously unknown things in the air. His tail branched into many sets of more fearsome squamous tendrils that whipped with frenzy to test their limits. His long blue mane of hair still echoed in his now great draconic mane that emerged between his horns and pointed draconic ears.

He lumbered forward up the mountain with his massive, terrible body. Nobody would recognize him like this anymore, not even himself, and not even Schala, wherever she may be.

But the stars were calling and he let out a terrible howl, the howl of the Black Wind itself in reply.

And then he would have his vengeance against Lavos a thousand times fold, rendering the kin of that creature extinct.


	3. As Narrated by a False Prophet

(Prompt: a moment from the character's canon in their perspective. Request: Falling into Zeal again and seeing Schala as the prophet.)

* * *

I shivered, my cloak was not enough to shield me from the intense cold around. My back ached against hard, frozen dirt. The pounding roar of the black wind quieted to a mocking whisper. A more natural wind howled outside.

I opened my eyes to see myself in a dimly-lit cave. I wearily forced myself to sit up, it turns out I was drained of more than just my magic.

This place, I…I know this place.

I wasted no time getting up despite the pain radiating throughout my body. I had to see if this is where I thought I was.

I quickly checked to see if everything was still with me. Yes, nothing was taken or lost.

I pulled my cloak tighter against myself and shot out the cave entrance. I hurled myself straight into the frozen, unforgiving tempest. I did not even think to levitate as usual, for my thirst for knowing was far too great.

Before me was miles and miles of ice-frosted land. Familiar ice-frosted land. There was a vaguely familiar building up ahead, with a light shining at its top to the sky. I craned my head upward, then my whole body was enveloped in chills. My limbs immediately weighed down and the cold air did nothing to me as I looked up in the sky, knees down.

A group of intensely familiar, massive, floating islands loomed above.

I could only laugh at this terrific irony. I had failed to bring Lavos to me that night, only to wind up at the start. Maybe there was such a thing as fate after all, and fate was cruel joker who found pleasure in toying with me.

Fate, whatever terrible thing it may be—cruel god or mindless series of events—will not stop me. I will find Lavos again, and I will continue to purge this world of that terrible thing.

I steadfastly made my way over the the skyway. I started to recall a time in my childhood, just before the fall when I ran through this area alone, what was I doing? Oh yes, I was…I was running to save Schala, she had just been taken by Dalton to the Ocean Palace. I ran just as quickly as I did back then, running, faster than ever, maybe this time, this time I could find her, I could save her…

The mind has a way of tying together space and memory. I know this well because it was happening to me now. The wind was eroding away my years, my limbs lightened, my clothes felt thinner, and I was…smaller. I felt small against this vast unforgiving terrain that pounded me with frigid gusts, that bit through my very core.

"Schala!" I screamed at the cold, howling void. My voice even sounded more youthful, more unknowing and naive.

Yet no amount of repeating the same actions, in the same place could ever truly take back the years. As soon as I entered the skyway building, I stopped and panted to catch my breath within its temperature-controlled ornate interior. I caught my reflection on a shiny, golden surface panel. I twitched a little, gazing upon the image of the Fiendlord instead of the young, foolish, prince.

What I had to do here would depend on when I was there. Without hesitation I stepped into the skyway and braced myself for the vaguely familiar shot upward to the home of the enlightened ones, my home.

The moment I stepped off the skyway building, I froze. The air was mild and perfectly tuned to a welcoming crispness and adjusted to a perfect mildness. The sun shove brightly against the perfect blue gradient of the sky and reflected onto the clouds below into a blinding blanket. The scent of clean, fresh air perfectly accentuated the sheer beauty of what shone before me. Miles upon miles of perfectly manicured foliage nestled between architecturally impeccable rounded buildings that melded into the landscape like natural features of the land. A babbling waterfall rose above and landed too a river that emptied out the edge of the island. It was a world of light, a world of hope and dreams; I almost forgot I just came from a world of darkness and savagery, and that I myself was a creature inured into that now distant world.

I reminded myself this was also a world of hubris and of decadence in both ways of the term.

Up above the waterfall was a very familiar palace that was the highest point in all the land. Every fiber of my body ached to run up there, to cheer and revel at my return home.

Nobody here would recognize me. They'd find my appearance a peculiar curiosity. Furthermore I had to think about just at what point in the timeline where I had landed. What I'd do would greatly be dependent on that.

I quickly tempered my childish impulses and took the reigns of my mind. I looked to the closest building to me, which I instantly recognized as the Kajar palace and magical research facility.

A flood of familiarity hit me like a torrent of wind as soon as I entered. The beautiful, gold-laced interiors, the perfectly carved statues, the shining, tiled floors. People in the most exquisite of cloths, fine paintings and finely bound books bursting with magical power here and there.

I prodded a sleeping nu at the entrance. These familiar constructs were a common sight throughout Zeal even if their awkward appearance suggested they ought to be children's playthings.

"Tell me the date." I commanded.

It jolted up at the sound of my harsh voice and strange appearance.

As soon as it revealed the date and time to me, my skin paled further.

It was weeks before the fall.

That meant that mother had already been mad for some years. The Ocean Palace was already toward the end of it's construction. Schala was here and she would be constantly at the beck and call of mother. And me…I would be lonely as ever with only Alfador as my companion.

If I was to interfere, to finally exact my revenge and save them all, I'd have to conceal myself and conceal my motives. I'd have to worm myself into the inner circle of my mother, the queen, and speak to her things she'd want to hear but I'd grate my teeth to say. If I had been given years to undo what will happen to Zeal, I'd prevent this whole ordeal from happening, but I had only been given so little time. There was only one way to do it, and it would be to reach Lavos and take that thing down myself. To reach Lavos, I would have to be in the Ocean Palace, I would have to prod and accelerate the very events that lead to the doom of this place, and then snatch that doom from the moment of its hideous arrival. I could do it, I spent years honing myself to destroy Lavos, I can spend another month. I will have my revenge against that wretched creature no matter what.

I looked around the room and saw a dark blue tablecloth with gold fringes atop an unused table. I snatched it and draped it upon my form to make sure much of my face was to be concealed. It would be best if my vampiric visage not get in the way of my words, or any comments about having a peculiar resemblance to the late king.

Instead of lingering in the place, I made my way to the palace. I was to return home as a stranger.

"Welcome to Zeal Palace, stranger!" A man greeted me as I came in.

"I wish to see the queen." I demanded.

"For what reason, sir?" He asked.

"I am an oracle who has seen the future. I must tell the queen of events to come that would interfere with the future of Zeal."

"Oh my! Well, she is busy now, she will be in her throne room shortly anyway, it's to th-"

"I know where to go." I interrupted.

I did not want to waste time. This familiar interior continued to bombard my memories and take me back to my childhood here. The familiar smells and sounds almost sunk me to a smaller size and mindset. I battled the waves of nostalgia as I walked these ornate corridors of the place that was once my home.

But steeling my mind against these feelings would never prepare me for what happened next.

An incredibly familiar, soothing, sweet voice echoed through the walls. A voice that calmed my senses like sweet nectar and caressed my very soul. All I could do was freeze and stand still.

"Hello there, visitor. I've never seen you around!" That sweet voice said. I knew exactly who it was.

"I…" I couldn't utter a response.

I simply turned the direction of the voice slowly, hesitantly. My hood covered much of my vision of her, but I could still see her silken lavender robe.

My mind returned to me. I made a bow to her.

"Your majesty." I said.

Her cheerful, sunny voice radiated the room like a sunbeam. "What might you be doing here?"

"I came to warn the queen of events to come."

Her disposition dimmed. "Oh, well…" I knew that despite her bright aura, inside was turmoil and doubt. A melancholy within her about the fate of Zeal as mother drifted downward into madness.

She nervously looked around before whispering. "She should be in her throne room in a minute."

"Thank you, Sch…your majesty." I bowed to her.

I desperately crushed my old, naive desires to hug her and tell her it was me, her little brother all grown up and beaten by the rages of time spent with monsters. Time spent in blood and hate, tyranny and misery to myself and others. What would she think of the monster her brother had become? That in itself was more motivation to stop Lavos at all costs.

Maybe even the cost of myself and mother if it came to that. Even if the rest of this declining kingdom had to go, I'd do anything to save you, Schala.

Even if you are going to hate me for what I am about to do.


	4. Magus is an Enigma to History

(Prompt: Well there really was no prompt to this, but it was hastly inspired by a fanart of Magus Photoshopped into a picture of a book.)

* * *

Alyss, a student scholar of Guardia, always found the mysterious legendary Fiendlord fascinating, but he was still was an agonizing subject to research. What information on this mysterious figure in history was available was shamefully terse, yet she still pressed on in her quest in the library. Hours had passed since she began her search and was already beginning to wonder how she should approach her professor about changing her research topic. The evening hours matured into the early cusp of the small hours of the morning, and yet the number of reliable sources on the mysterious figure known in history as "The Fiendlord" remained stagnant. Even in Guardia's royal library where she was given special permission to search for as long as she needed, was there hardly a touch of this strange figure who was a fading legend, yet still the subject and inspiration behind many myths and tall tales in Truce.

Another stale cup of coffee passed her weary lips and the infernal ticking of the clock rang louder as others departed the library. The smell of old musty books hung in the air like a taunting miasma tickling her already weary senses. She sat back in her chair and drummed her chewed pencil against the ancient timber table absentmindedly. Her scalp itched, her eyes needed to be rubbed, she rubbed her face in agitation.

Her back forced itself against the old wooden chair, and she was soon caught in a strange twilight between sleep and wakefulness, yet still not in that state that is capable of birthing nonsensical phantasms. It was the kind where one is attempting to find respite in an uncomfortable position, and a battle between one's discomfort and one's somniferous needs came to a dreary stalemate.

Sometimes this limbo suspend's one's mind and therefore ripe for absentminded and fanciful thoughts.

The strange figure in Guardia's history known as "The Fiendlord" was a mystic, or was he? There were rumors that he might not have been one after all, but these came from her unreliable sources. The tales that mystics tell never agree with one another, he was a savior of their kind, but later considered a traitor, but it was unknown if this was were propaganda from the royal line of their kind-that line of squat goblinoids whose respect waned in the generations due to the miserable failure of their infamous ancestor.

The accusation was that the creature dubbed "Lavos", a creature and a name that newly discovered archeological sites have shown to be more than just the tall tales of mystics, was to be created or summoned by "The Fiendlord", but at the eleventh hour vanished, and the creature nowhere to be found. Later on, there were rumors he had shown up again, but with humans by his side, and he took down his own comrades.

Later about, 200 years ago during the time of the Millennial anniversary of, a man whose description almost matches "The Fiendlord" seem to pop up in yet more unreliable sources that speak of romping wildwomen and sentient robots. Yet it had been 400 years between his first and last appearance.

Alyss turned her head desperately on the pile of books that she deemed where unreliable sources.

Among them was one most curious, a book that was obviously a work of fiction, or so she thought, but insisted somehow on being a memoir. The memoir of the famous scientist Lucca Ashtear. The autobiography spoke of fanciful things of a warped imagination, spoke of ancient civilizations, of prehistoric times, and a future she claimed to negate. How could such a rational and brilliant woman insist on the truth of such impossible things? Or did she understand well that these would be too farfetched to be believed and resigned to passing them as fiction?

Curiouser and curiouser, she found, that this if it were true-was the most thorough source about the mysterious figure that Ashtear had affectionally named "Janus". The way Dr. Ashtear spoke of him it was obvious she had a crush on this historical figure and decided to write some scandalous and self-indulgent fanfiction about him. There was even an illustration of the figure that was obviously too idealized, as idealized as the exaggerated accounts of his magical might. Maybe she had hung out with the mystics that still prayed to his image futiley too long and became enrapture by their songs of azure tresses that resembled the waves of the sea.

The weary student came to the conclusion that if she spent more time researching him, she would also become madly obsessed with him as well. As they say, with genius comes madness.

Yet, if this was indulgent fantasy, why didn't they fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after in the end? The end seemed incomplete, and at times, sorrowful. There was the dreadful account of the near fall of Guardia at the hands of Porre, and the account of what happened when she vanished-an account that sounded even more fantastical than the journey to slay Lavos.

Alyss had not completely made her way to the end of the book, in fact she had merely skimmed its preposterous contents. As she did, a flicker of a word passed her glance, a flicker from a page near the end. Actually it was an unusual pair of words, but one expected from the feverish mind of Ashtear. They were the pairing of the words "Janus" and "hero".

Curious. Oh look, another idolized account of the man, somehow appearing out of nowhere to save the day, and was responsible for stopping Porre from completely obliterating Guardia and ensuring it would have a better future. She just laughed and smirked at this account.

It was then that drowsiness won the stalemate.

When she woke up, the sun was rising. The unfortunate position of her back pined to be released of its torment. Empty coffee cups strewn all over the old desk along with the scant reliable books and the piles of bizarre fantasies.

A new addition appeared on the table. It was a set of royal documents dating from 200 years prior. She carefully donned her antiquarian's gloves and lifted the aged parchment.

Most were letters from Queen Nadia during her days as a princess.

And that name stuck out like a blemish.

"Janus"

"Magus"

"I think Janus is coming over tonight, oh he is so irritable sometimes!"

"Sometimes I still call him Magus, but I wonder how he feels about that name. It's nice to have someone else who understands life as royalty."

"I don't think anyone is going to believe Lucca's memoir."

And then there was one in another handwriting. Someone else's handwriting.

A letter to Queen Nadia congratulating her on her wedding and coronation.

A letter from someone named…

…Janus Zeal.


End file.
